


Paper Castles and Fae Magic

by lady_wordsmith



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack and Angst, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Humor, Mpreg, Original Mythology, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Upir, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:19:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_wordsmith/pseuds/lady_wordsmith
Summary: As the child of a fae-human union, you're used to weird. Upirs, werewolves, mystic realms and rising from the dead...  It's been an eventful few years (an eventful life really, but Roman and Peter added some extra fun to the equation for you. Lousy bastards and theirvaguelyhomoerotic friendship), but you were really looking forward to some peace and quiet.Then Roman got pregnant. Because of course it wasn't weird enough.One question: Does that make you the mom, or the dad? I mean, assuming it's actually a baby and not a demon hijacking Roman's hitherto unknown womb?





	Paper Castles and Fae Magic

It had started as a joke about Roman’s lingering stomach flu (that he really shouldn't have had in the first place, but stomach flu was easier to believe then what it ended up being) that rapidly spiraled into the terrifying idea that he was dying when you bought a pregnancy test for him in jest and it came back positive when he obliged to take the joke as far as it could go. Of course, Roman had tried for levity. The possibility of death was clear, but he still made jokes.

“Maybe you did get me pregnant, babe. I mean, wasn't Nizvian some kind of dickless fae that still knocked your mom up?” he asked.

“First off, don't talk about my  _ dradnak _ that way, you uncouth bastard; it's a noble as fuck bloodline well-respected in the world of mythics while you upirs are pissbaby wannabe demons with a bloodlust problem. And second, I explained that-” you replied.

“Yeah, yeah, something about fae mimicry and human form and all that. I'm just saying…” Roman trailed off, the hint of amusement clear on his face.

“If the words ‘invisible fairy penis’ come out of your mouth, Roman, I'm going to do some horrible magic to you. Like cover you in purple spots, turn you into a toad, or make your socks permanently mismatched for the rest of your life.” you scolded him.

“Okay, okay-”

“Besides, I think ‘secret upir womb’ trumps ‘invisible fairy penis,‘ just saying.”

Roman flipped you off.

“It's probably nothing and you're worrying for no good reason.” He told you.

That had been that until the day of the appointment. You had woken up in the middle of the night to find Roman standing by your bedroom window, staring out of it and smoking a cigarette as the shadows and moonlight made him seem otherworldly. Judging from the look on his face when he turned and saw you rise from the bed, he had been there a while.

“What if… you're right, and it's cancer and I'm dying?” He asked you.

You moved to stand beside him, clasping one of his shaky hands in both of yours.

“We'll deal with it, like we have everything else.” You tried to reassure him, but his face remained troubled. “You're not going to die, Roman.”

“Says the woman who came back from the dead by nothing but sheer force of will.” He tried to sound flip and nonchalant, but it wasn't working. He stubbed out his cigarette and took you back to bed, where he pulled your arms around himself and rested his head on your chest and stayed that way for as long as he could, as if you could protect him from the fears plaguing his mind. You didn't even correct him on his words about your supposed death; you simply held him because you knew he needed you and your strength. You weren't even sure if you really  _ had _ that strength, but you could pretend if that was what he needed.

After Roman had left for work and his appointment with Pryce, you tried to keep busy: a few phone calls about a case you were working on, writing up a report on another case in progress, and lunch with Letha and Shelley, telling neither of them what was happening between you and Roman. They knew about the stomach flu, but you had managed to allay any sort of fear or suspicion. Luckily, Letha had new pictures of herself and Nadia and Peter and it was easy to distract yourself from your sense of impending doom.  After lunch, you tried to distract yourself with reading and taking a walk around the grounds, but you couldn't relax or focus on anything besides Roman.

Hours after he should have been home, you saw Roman's car finally pull in, and you went to meet him at the door. You tried not to be nervous when he didn't enter right away, but you noticed the faraway look in his eyes as he stared at the sky. He was worrying his lower lip, and several times he made to reach for his pack of cigarettes but brought his hand back empty. Finally, he entered the house, and the first thing he did was take you into his arms.

“It's not cancer.” He says, his voice slightly muffled by the way he buries his face in your hair. “Apparently I'm pregnant, six or seven weeks by the size of it.” He lifts his head, stands straighter, and stares into your face, studying your reaction. 

“Pryce is sure? There's… It's a… You're not…” you were tripping over your words as Roman tightened his hold on you.

“Yeah,” Roman murmured. “I'm not dying, just… magically knocked up. There's a kid in there.” and he lets go of you, taking your hand in his and bringing your joined hands to rest on his still flat abdomen. His face is unreadable as the two of you stand there. Finally, he furrows his brow and sighs, letting go of your hand and letting it drop. “Well? Come on, then.”

You look at him in confusion as his face contorts in anger and his eyes narrow at you, and then you look away because you  _ know _ what he's about to try and do, even if you don't know why he's doing it. “Roman? I'm sorry, I don't under-”

“Just say it.” Roman growls. “I'm a freak, even more than I was already.”

“Roman, what? This isn't your fau-”

“But I'm the pregnant freak, aren't I? It doesn't matter how it fucking happened, it happened and I'm even more of a fucking  _ freak _ than I was, okay? So go on, get it over with and tell me how fucked up I am and then you can get your shit and get out.”

You glare back at him, reaching for his arm but he slaps your hand away. “Just go!” he roars at you.

“No.” you say, your voice soft and steady in the face of Roman's fury.

Roman almost physically stumbles at your refusal. “What?” he asks, his expression bewildered. You had explained it to him once, how the nature of your blood helped you resist his stare when he gave you a command that went against your morals or ethics, but you doubt he remembered in his emotional state.

“No.” you repeat, moving toward Roman slowly, as one would toward a trapped animal. He makes to back away from you, to stand tall and try to reclaim his position, but the steadiness of your gait makes him crumble and fall to his knees as he reaches for you, allowing you to embrace him and run your hands through his hair as he grabs your waist and buries his head in between your breasts. He wails against you, a howl of pain and anguish and sorrow that you suspect has only a little to do with the current predicament. Despite how he acts, you know Roman cares very deeply, and feels things very deeply, and that he tries to bury all of it. But with everything he has felt, perhaps about everything he's been through, it has all boiled over and released itself through the prism of discovering the life growing within him.

As Roman's wails die down into hiccupy sobs and whimpers, you lower yourself and Roman to lie on the floor, one hand still in his hair and the other rubbing his back. You don't say anything to him yet, letting him cry because you know he needs it, that this latest news has brought him to a level of overload you can't imagine.

“I'm s-sorry,” he lets out in between the sobs and hiccups. “So...  _ fucking _ s-s-sorry.”

You want to reassure him there's nothing to be sorry for but you know he needs to say this, needs to voice his concerns and fears and whatever else.

“What if… what if it's some fucking monster in me, not from you and me somehow but some other  _ thing- _ ” and he spits that last word like a curse, clearly remembering the creatures you've told him of, the things beyond werewolves and upirs that he hadn't known before you, the things you and your human mother had encountered, the things your fae parent had hidden among and lived beside. “That’s using me as a vessel for something?”

“We'll deal with it, you and I. Together.” you say, with a calm you really shouldn't be feeling. You had heard tales you never shared with Roman, and you certainly weren't telling him now. “And if it's just a regular, run-of-the-mill baby-”

“No child between an upir and a half-fae is going to be normal,” Roman grumbles. “At best, they deal with having fairy magic. At worst, they deal with having fairy magic  _ and _ blood thirst.”

“So we go through a ridiculous amount of turmoil to end up with a baobhan sith. Roman, my point is-” and you grab his face and force him to look you in the eye. “I'm not leaving you, no matter how this ends up. It's a vessel for a demon bent on taking over the universe with Hemlock Grove as its base of operations? I'm there while we figure out how to stop it from getting that far. If it's the result of some fae that I or my parents helped out deciding to pay its debt by giving us the gift of a child even though it fucked up on the biology, probably for ha-has because fae are dicks like that? Then I'm here even if we  _ really _ have to be careful once the baby reaches the bitey toddler stage.” You pause. “You do want it, right? If it's ours and not something else? I mean, I'm asking because if the situation was normal, I'd hope you would ask me instead of just assuming.”

“Would you want it? If you were pregnant, would you?” He asks. It's not an answer, and he knows it, but you know he needs to feel you're in this with him.

You pause, resting a hand on his abdomen as you think. “It's earlier than I would have planned, but I always thought we'd have a little one running around eventually. But that's me. Roman, you're the one in the driver's seat here. No matter what this is or what you decide I would never judge you for doing what you believe is right.”

Roman pulls back from you, but his face is unreadable and you can't be sure if he's even offended by the suggestion of abortion or terrified at your acknowledgement of the suggestion of the presence of something masquerading as a baby within him.

“It's me. And it's you. It might be from us. Somehow.” Roman says haltingly. “I… I want it. Even if it scares the hell out of me.” Tears are in his eyes again, but he blinks them back and kisses you with a rare amount of tenderness he doesn't normally express.

Roman rises from the floor, bringing you with him. The two of you stand together in the hallway holding each other, your foreheads pressed together. 

“I know we don't do mushy stuff, but... Roman Godfrey, you are the love of my life and nothing and no one will take me from you as long as both of us are breathing, and maybe not even then. You are it for me, okay? I left you once, maybe not totally under my own power, but don't ask me to do it again. I couldn't, I can't, and I won't.” You tell him. “And I'm here no matter what happens with this, okay?”

With that, you reach up and kiss Roman's forehead, before slowly moving your lips to leave light kisses all over his face. Roman's quiet for a long time, simply basking in your attention, his eyes closed and his breakdown over save for a few sniffles. 

“Peter's gonna give me so much shit,” he finally says, and the two of you chuckle.

“Trust me, I'm eagerly awaiting his confusion.” you think for a minute when something strikes you and you snort, which makes Roman quirk an eyebrow. “Do you think he'll ask about the invisible fairy penis first, or will your secret upir womb shock him into silence?”

Maybe it's the gravitas you give the question, the dead serious expression on your face, or just the absurdity of the situation, but Roman actually laughs, a full body-shaking tear-streaming wheezing laugh that has him holding you in a crushing hug. When he finally calms down, he gazes at you with an amused look.

“Now you have to be there when I tell him. And everyone else, obviously. They won't believe me otherwise.” he says, resting his chin on top of your head with a sigh. “And babe?”

“Hmm?”

“You're it for me too, okay? Even if I'm shit at saying it. I fucking love you.” He pulls back to look at your face again, and smiles when he sees you're beaming.

“I damn well better be, Godfrey. I didn't leave the fae realm and whatever the hell that otherworld was and pass out on your doorstep to be anything less than it for you,” you joke, brushing your nose against his with a laugh.

“Glad we agree. Now…” Roman picks you up and begins carrying you to the bedroom. I don't know about you, but I've had a very stressful day that could be made a thousand times better by you and me fucking until we pass out. Deal?”

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some quick notes:  
> -Cracky as fuck, still kind of serious. Blame the Bill Skarsgard fandom on tumblr.  
> -AU as fuck from like the middle of the first season-ish. Letha deserved better, damn it.  
> -We start with the mpreg, do a quickish covering of the altered first season, and then it's between the present and the events leading up to it (expect flashbacks, basically). Long as fuck, both humorous and serious.  
> -The type of fae the Reader Character is part of are (mostly) made up from an old RPG some friends and I wrote as middle/high schoolers, slightly updated and altered because I liked the idea. The pertinent facts of the fae: these fae themselves are sexless and have no concept of gender (meaning they're neither male nor female. Yes, they can breed other fae like themselves; no, I'm not telling you how right now), but they can have children with other species after they transform into that particular species (in this case, fae parent, or _dradnak_ as the word is in their particular tongue, transformed into a human male, had sex with a human woman, and had a half-fae child). These fae are considered part of the Seelie Court ("light/good" fae as opposed to UnSeelie, "evil/dark" fae). They generally live separate from other fae species and other mythological creatures (most of the time), though they still hold many of the same views (which will be gotten into later)  
> -Half-fae facts that are pertinent: half-blooded fae of this fae type generally follow the particular conventions of their other species (human, in this case, meaning born male or female [other mythic species are weird, please don't ask], though whether they accept the conventions and use their fae blood to circumvent this is up to them; that's right, being trans/non-binary is acceptable among these fae), though they also possess magic from their fae bloodlines (which tend toward healing/creation/protection/"positive" magic in keeping with the Seelie Court business, so her threat to Roman about using fae magic to make him suffer is mostly empty)  
> -Baobhan sith are basically vampire/fae hybrids from Celtic myth. In this world, they exist, though as their own species (so Roman and Reader Character's baby, while it could share characteristics, would not actually be one)


End file.
